Plink plink plink

So, I've just dropped another internal test build out, capturing another big bunch of changes I've been building up with particular little fixes and tweaks.

Small Update: I tweaked item code to show useful information for Reagents in a transaction setting, so you can click on one in a vendor, or loot pile, and see how good it is, and what properties it impacts.

Medium Update: I added more UI and some code, so that when you're buying items from a vendor that can stack (so, potions, meals, reagents - basically almost anything consumable), it won't sit there buying them one at a time, but let you use a slider to pick how many you want to buy.

Medium Update: Abilities in the game now use files the game caches from the server for ability icons, so I can add in new spells and things without having to release a new build onto the play store. It'll just grab new files off the server when you load it up.

Medium Update: Same as above for effects. So much better to be able to drop them into the game, even on my own end without having to muck about with all manner of file management in my dev environment. I mean, there's still a bit, but no-where near as much.

Small Rumours (Edit: Big rumours): There's been a lot of renaming of items, as well as a good bunch of new things added to some vendors and loot tables. I've been thinking about how things will be called in game, and while "Health Potion" was good enough while I was testing, it's not really quite "up there" in the way I envisage the world in which the game is set. Lets face it, if you've got a tummy upset, you might have a peppermint tea to settle things down, or if you want a quick pick-me-up you might grab a coffee, or coca-cola, or pepsi. We don't call them "Action Potion" or "Stomach Settle Drink". So, my initial items now have proper names, in-line with what they are made of, or how they are made in the game. Okay, so by now, we're moving off small rumours, and into larger rumour territory - but while it's not on my short-term to-do list, I'll eventually do item crafting in the game, and I think these names will lead perfectly into the recipes that these items will be made with eventually - so the Swiftgrass Potion, the Swig of River's Tears, the Scarlet Seagrass Tea, will all make more sense when I start to look at what goes into them and how they're actually made.

So, plink, plink, plink, all the changes are slowly, one by one, bit by bit coming together. I'm planning on doing a half-decent rewrite of how some code is handled over the next few days, so this should keep things in place until those changes come through with how creatures are controlled by the game - but I wanted to get these things fixed before that.

Editor Code.... and Reagent Rumors

I spent some time this afternoon working on the editor, upgrading the way I add item images to the game. Basically, till now, I've really been schlubbing it. I go to a file folder, find what "item number" I'm up to, then find the image I want to use in another folder, rename it, move it to where it needs to be, and then type the filename into my editor screen to update it. Well, thank goodness, no more.

I coded up an improvement that brings me closer to the now. It's all drag and drop onto the editor window with a file, and it does the rest - and they're all available to use instantly in the tools I've been building. So with that, I went and created some new reagents to add to the game, and popped them onto a vendor in town, added a few different ones to creature drops and it's all just going swimmingly. These will all be due for a balancing and tuning later, but for now, just mixing in a few different things into the game.

So, Roister's Vendor in town now has some new wares, and more will be added to Floren Farmhouse, but there's a mix of different reactions to investigate and match up with abilities to get the right extra pop when you need them.

Reagents and the Ebb

I've been quite busy with work, but I have been spending some well-deserved time at the code, and I'm really really happy to say that abilities and effects are now correctly picking up both the benefits of reagents and the magical ebb and flow I was talking about in my last post.

I can also see, that I do need to seriously look at balance and how powerful these things need to end up. For testing, I made up some random stats on a reagent, and went with what I thought was a pretty balanced set of parameters for the ebb - and ended up with a healing spell, that started off on a base value of healing 5 points and wound up healing me for 40 points. So you know, probably a bit of tuning to go in terms of what things do and what numbers I place into reagents. 

Having said that... it all worked exactly how I expected it to. I'll need to do some proper thorough testing, but it's all looking very promising. Reagents will give abilities and spells more punch, more range, better buff/debuff-over-time and the ebb and flow of magic will enhance that even further, or if no reagents are used - enhance or subdue what you're doing depending on the phases of the moons.

Again, this is all really really dry, trying to explain it, and how it works, and what it does - so the short version is "I'm really happy with how a very cool feature is turning out, though I'll need to tune it to get it where it should be in the end."

Magical Ebb and Flow

So, generally when I post here, there's a funny mix of reasons for it. Foremost, is that when you're here reading it, I'd like to share the cool new thing I've done, or the thing I'm working on with you directly. I don't know how you've found my little dev blog, but you're here, and generally more of you turn up each day. So welcome. I also post to keep myself on track with what I'm doing. It's a way to solidify what I've done, so that it feels like it's progressing - which it is, though sometimes it feels like at a snail's pace compared to what I'd like it to be. Sometimes it is also to jot down what I need to do next, so that I can see it the day after, or the day after that, and remember the things I need to do next so stuff works.

What I rarely do though, is post the higher level over-arching ideas and concepts. A good part of that is because I want to let those come out in the game, through different story arcs and through little connections that can be dropped in random places, so that the really clever you, who is paying attention can join the dots in the ideas I'm having on how things work.

Today is a day that I can share one of the early concepts I've had about this game world, and one that's been there from basically day one of my thinking on how the world will be.

There are three moon gods that circle the world, and each of them has two faces, or sides. They're like opposite sides of a coin, and depending on which side is looking upon the world, is what magical energies are strengthened, and what powers will be wane.

Infernus and Pacific are the faces of Fire and Water on one of the moon gods, and depending on which one (if any) are facing the world, spells, abilities and creatures aligned to that deity will be empowered, while the opposing side will be taxed of energy. I'm working on the tuning of it, but generally the bonuses far outweigh the reductions - so there's a big net positive between them. Same goes for the moon that has Earth and Air, and again for Life and Death. As these power and drive the way magic interacts and flows into the world, I want there to be a fourth and final effect, which is Chaos and Entropy. When the gods are heavily focused upon the world, and they are strongly enhancing the magical powers, the interaction of magical powers enhances Chaotic energies, while when the faces of the moon gods are focused on one another, rather than turned towards the earth, all magic will wane, and Entropy will reign.

I'm scratching at the surface here, as there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of story and myth that I'd like to get into in the game itself, but, in a very wordy and long-winded way, I've been hard at work, finally writing the code that will insert all this into the game - it's been long in the simmering, while I've been creating all the other functionality. But right now, I can finally, and I say finally, start working on how these cycles interact with abilities and effects on characters and creatures. 

Of course, in the way these things inevitably happen, it means I'm going to need to rewrite the way some code functions - but it isn't massive changes, it's rather just making it more efficient, in setting the impact on the ability or effect itself, then passing that particular object to the code, rather than what I do now, which is passing an ID of the ability around. Anyhow, all that isn't important. The important thing is that it's really all coming together in the last bits of "things I need to work" before I can start considering the core aspects of the game working.

The plan for the remainder of the weekend is to really get into this code change, and as I do this, also tie up the loose ends with Reagents and just how the work on both abilities and effects.

There's rumors, there's reagents and there's new spells

First off, I just saw the date on the last post, and didn't realize it's been that long between updates. I've been quite busy, apparently too busy to post updates.

So, here's the skinny:

I discovered a bit of a big logic gap in creature abilities, namely in all my testing, I'd really just had creatures using abilities through melee strikes, as in legging it over and slogging a character, but also using an ability at the same time. Brilliant, happy days. All that. Right up until I dropped in a Goblin Shaman, gave him spellcasting abilities and then sat there scratching my head at why he was trying to ruin up and hit people with his spell.

So, updating the code for that took the best part of five days, creating a downright handful of new code that looks after that sort of action from creatures. The good news is that now, creatures happily cast spells as expected (technically, they're casting instant spells, still need to check this code with spells/abilities that have casting time but I'm taking the wins where I can get them.

Next up, I did a whole bunch of work around creating appropriate "tick messages" for effects on characters or monsters. So, if someone has an effect on them (like the characters in the screenshot) the messages will show appropriately to that effect and/or ability. As you can see, abilities also have their own lighting, that's just an aside, but a good one.

Right, also. The game has always meant to have possible reagents in it - basically, you can cast a spell, and it will do it's spell thing - but you can also cast that same spell, and use particular ingredients, and that spell will do it's spell thing, only much better. So you know, a fireball is a fireball, unless you happen to use a pinch of sulphur with it when you cast - in which case it will be a bigger, better fireball. It'll use up the sulphur, so reagents are best used for those important moments, when you're combat success is on a knife-edge, or when you're trying to punch above your weight in what you're picking fights with. So, I've always meant to have this in the game, and I created placeholders for it to be there in menus you can see, but I've never implemented it properly. So up until now, it's been a button that crashes the app, and I've had more than one tester berate me with it. So, while reagents aren't fully implemented right now, the buttons no longer cause the app to crash, and I'm much closer to having them functioning in the app. A big part of this was working out just how they'll function, but I've got that sketched out nicely in a scrap book which I always keep on the desk.

So, there's a lot here, and these updates probably should have been a few posts along the way. But there's one more thing. Probably something I'll be posting more frequently in the future, a rumour mill:

There's reports that the goblin shamans in the caves under the Floren Isles have learned a new spell that conjures up the foulest stenches from deep bogs. Adventurers are warned of this new conjuration, but also informed that perhaps one of the Goblin Shamans may have a scroll on their person that will teach this ability to others.

New Abilities, Ability Functionality and Spells

It's been a few days since I posted, but I have been super busy working on iterative builds here to run through my own testing, and that of some folks testing stuff for me, and there's been loads of updates.

In no real order: I've added a bunch of functionality tweaks to my editor that lets me enter in and save new data needed for abilities and items easily. Those new fields let me set requirement needs for abilities better, as well as setting up some data (that was kind of there already) for items that teach you abilities. And I made a bunch of new spells. And I fixed creatures to be affected by damage-over-time abilities (which they weren't being hit by due to a "beature" - feature of code that's actually a bug.

Let me tie it together. I created a few new "real, not just testing" spells. One of them is a small fireball with a damage over time, and another is basically a light of sorts. To have one of my mages be able to cast this, I needed for him to learn the spell. That meant adding in items that taught it, or rather, fixing what was there but had apparently stopped working. Then doing a bunch of editor code work to let me set it up properly. Then some app work to bring all this info in properly, and display it in the item splash for the character inventory screen properly. Then have it also do that in a merchant window, so you can know what you're buying. Then went back and added skill requirements into that - so you know what skills you character will need to use it, before you buy it. And then, just for good measure, tweaked the code, so that if you don't have the needed skills to use an ability, it won't let you learn it.

New build is out for testers just now, so lets see what's what tomorrow!

Oh, the image is one of my mages casting a brand new, but teeny tiny fireball spell. Oh, and a cool thing that I implemented before, that's not actually been used is that effects can add lights. Twofold use. One, I can create a cool spell that gives you a light to see with in dark places if you don't have better, such as torches or lanterns. And secondly, it means if you cast a fireball at someone, they'll also be lit up nicely until the fire wears off them.

Character Stats Streamlining

It feels a long time ago now, but I was listening to Tim (https://www.youtube.com/@CainOnGames) ages ago and he was talking about getting stats right, and using a spreadsheet to plan them out with level progression and the like etc etc. The idea is that you can see what you start at, where you can likely progress to, and that gives you the right information to be able to start designing creature stats, items and so on and things are about where they should be.

Well, given that intro, no points for guessing what I've been tinkering with.

I think I've got all my basic stats just where I'd like them to be - with maybe the exception of Attack Rating, which is mainly as I am not sure how frequent I want things to be hitting everything else.

So, with that, it's back to the editor to tweak some creatures and items, and really, to put some items into the game, as it's really really bare, but I really wanted these stats planned and visible in terms of progression, so I know roughly how to set things up.